Mind Over Matter
by thepandathatrawrs
Summary: But nobody could’ve anticipated what was going to happen next. A flash of yellow car lights blinding her eyes. A screech of tires. A scream. A crunch. The sound of her PearPod, destroyed. The thud as her body slams onto the bumpy road. Blackness.
1. Introduction

**Introduction**

_It's evening. The sun has gone down, and the sky is rapidly turning darker every minute – pedestrians are in a hurry to return back to their homes. The road is busy with cars holding impatient drivers who've had a long day at work. Shops are closing, couples are sharing their last kiss before their promises to meet the next day, friends are parting. It is the usual, nothing out of the norm. Or it would have been, had not three close friends decided to meet at the very moment when everyone is getting ready to leave._

_The brunette and boy arrives together in front of a colorful, and just closed, smoothie shop, amiably chatting to one another. They're obviously waiting for somebody – even through their conversation, they occasionally look over their shoulders as if trying to catch a glimpse of someone. And finally, the boy seems to have caught sight of the last member of their small group; he nudges the brunette, and they both wave enthusiastically at the blonde that appeared on the other side of the road, who is waving back nonchalantly._

_With two earphones firmly plugged into her ears, a heavy metal song blasting away, she carelessly steps onto the street after briefly checking her right and left. The red light for the cars is on, after all. Her hands are casually slung in her hoodie pockets, fiddling with her PearPod. She would've made it to where her friends are at so easily, had not the device fallen out of her pockets._

_She swears, bending down to pick it up from the zebra crossing. Her friends' calls of sudden uncertainty is drowned out by the solo guitar part she is particularly fond about while she places it back into her pocket easily. Five seconds left – the blonde knows she can cover the rest of the short distance easily between that time._

_But nobody could've anticipated what was going to happen next._

_A flash of yellow car lights blinding her eyes. A screech of tires. A scream. A crunch. The sound of her PearPod, destroyed. The thud as her body slams onto the bumpy road._

_Blackness._

I can't move. I hurt all over. My arms hurt, my sides hurt, my legs hurt – and something is soaking me so slowly, yet so _steadily_. Something clings onto my hair, my skin, seeping and sticky all over. It's so familiar, but I can't place the word for it.

Why? Why can't I move?

_Screams. Yells. The feeling of a crowd enclosing onto the motionless figure on the ground, all talking at once. An elderly man is talking rapidly in his phone for the ambulance._

_In the midst of it all, a teenage boy and girl push their way to the crowd. The boy makes it first, being much taller than the brunette – his eyes widen in horror at the sight, before he falls down to the ground on his knees. His hands are trembling by his sides, as are his pale lips, all the color drained from his face like the blood that is pooling out of the fallen blonde. _

_Soon, another cry is heard – the brunette had finally made her way around. Her big eyes are even larger, and the crowd shifts slightly to give the two teenagers more room. Her screaming has stopped, instead being replaced by endless whimpers of "No. No, no, no, no, no." Despite the blonde's bloodied state, the brunette flings herself around the figure, her friend, sobbing. The boy is frozen in his state, mouth parted to form a terrified 'O'. Salty tears cascade down his ashen cheeks; he, too, refuses to admit that this is real._

_That this is so, so real._

I – it hurts. My throat is on fire. My eyelids are heavy – why aren't they opening? I want to scream, to yell, to do anything about the sudden pressure on my chest, abdomen, the upper part of my legs, but I can't hear my voice. Everything is so muffled, like I'm stuck underwater. Everyone's voice is slurred and tied together, an endless string of garbage that even the queen of gibberish, my Aunt Lorelai, wouldn't be able to understand.

The only thing magnified is my pain. I don't ever remember hurting this much; the last time feeling like this was in fifth grade, when a bully named Doug pushed me down the stairs, efficiently breaking my ribs and God remembered what else. At least I'd got him back. At least I had been able to scream.

The silence only adds salt to the open wounds, which are bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding. Blood – that was the word I was looking for. That red stuff I had scoffed yet during Biology 1 – scoffing at the very thing that made us live. I'm losing blood; what else could explain the exhaustion that wrecked my body hand-in-hand with excruciating pain?

I'm so _cold_.

_The crowd finally parts again when they hear the sound of the ambulance. Men climb out of the ambulance van, with two other men pushing the ramp in front of them. The only people that have remained in their same positions are the boy, brunette, and the injured blonde. "Shit," one of the men lets out, watching one of his crew helping the numb boy off the ground – the brunette is harder to clear from the area. He takes it to his hands as he gently eases the brunette off the blonde's body. It is harder than he had thought it would be – the brunette's grip on the patient continues to be unwaveringly strong until he mutters, "This will only cause her to lose more blood, ma'am." It's true – and he's relieved she's let go and allows him to move her out of the way too, so that his men have a clear route from the injured girl to the ambulance._

_The process of lifting her up gingerly from her fetal position on the ground to the ramp is quick, but he can see it in his fellow crew members' eyes that they are troubled by the amount of blood lost already. It goes without asking that the two teenagers – the boy and the hysterical brunette – follows onto the ambulance van too. They get on in a hurry, and the man closes the door once they've all climbed on, the siren above whirring loudly as they race towards the hospital._

_And they all knew who they were racing against. An unseen figure that could only be felt; a figure the hospital has met face-to-face with countless of times. Time – and death._

Just like my wish, the pressure that had been suffocating me is lifted – but as soon as it's gone, I know that I need it again. Because the sudden feeling of unimaginable _pain_ at the absent pressure makes the previous pain seem like _nothing_. I want to scream, to bash the _idiots_ causing all this that it hurts like hell, _anything_ – but then, I no longer feel the rough ground underneath me.

I'm flying. That must be it. I must be dead.

Then why can I still feel like I'm under torture? Death was supposed to be painless.

Something is poking through my skin – _why_? Don't these horrible _dingbats_ realize I'm suffering? The irony of it all makes me want to laugh, even if I no longer am in control of my muscles; the sounds are still buzzing noisily in my ears, yet I can _hear_ the sound of my skin tearing under the attack of the torturous tools they're using on me.

Why can't they just leave me alone?

I can feel myself flying again – the wind is flying through my blonde curls. And I can _smell_ the place; Freddie's apartment? The clean smell that tingles my nose everytime I head over to his place is unmistakably what I'm smelling right now. The nub. Out of all the places he leaves me to die at, it's at his place…

_The two teenagers trail desperately after the men who are pushing the ramp towards the emergancy ward, tired eyes zoomed into the limp blonde that they're carting away into the surgery room. They know they have to stay outside, but even so, they still try to push themselves past the firm man with a mask to join their best friend. They've never abandoned each other, never in a time of crises; they weren't going to start abandoning her now._

_But after a minute of useless struggling, they give up, dejected and drained. The brunette is sobbing again, silently this time – the boy's face is weary now, the look of an old man as he silently puts an arm around her and lead them towards the chairs. Both of them sink into the chairs heavily; the brunette continues to let her body tremble with silent cries. _

_Doctors, patients, nurses, and families pass by, some eyes watching the two teenagers with pity, some averting their gazes somewhere else, knowing that privacy was a treasured, important thing. But nobody went out of their way to console them, to ask what the matter was – this was the hospital. Death was a regular occurrence, even if the best surgeons fought an intense battle with it every second of every day. People died. Death was inevitable._

_Death lingered by them, lurking from behind the corridors, watching – waiting, like they were._

Drowsy. That's how I feel. Disoriented, like someone had spiked the punch bowl and I'd drunk ever drop of it.

Except this felt a hell lot worse. The pain was gone, that much I figured; the urge to yell at the top of my lungs had disappeared. Everything was clearing up, yet still just as foggy – my vision was no longer of red and black, but of _white_.

Pure, blinding, blank _white_.

"Carls? Freddork?" To my surprise, my own voice rung clearly, the end having a strange tinge of an echo – as if I was in a cage. Trapped. I rubbed my eyes as I sat up with a groan, the motion coming so naturally to me that I blinked at my hands in shock. Hadn't I been completely helpless before? I took my eyes off my hands to see if there was some damn _switch_ I could find to flick off the white before it _blinded_ me. There was nothing. Nothing but a huge, empty space of freaking _white._

A new sense of desperation washed over me. I didn't like this. Didn't like this one _bit_.

"Spence? Lewbert? Mom? Crazy?" Had there been other people around, my uneasiness would have been clear – I had to call Frednerd's _mother_, for one. I was on my feet now, mildly relieved even in this situation to find that my clothes were unbloodied, my muscles and joints having the kind of stiffness I usually get from sleeping more than twelve hours. No cuts, no bruises, no scars. Just like before – before –

Before…

Before what?

"Shit." What had happened to me?

"_My baby. My sweet, sweet baby." _

_Carly and Freddie simply look on with separate looks of anguish on their faces as another woman – Sam's mother – weeps over the fragile-looking blonde that lies still on the bed. The teens resist the urge to turn their heads away from the scene. Sam wasn't supposed to look fragile and weak; even in her sleep, Carly knew that Sam continued to restlessly beat everything in sight, a smirk lingering throughout her slumber. Freddie, being the number one punchbag the blonde has always turned to, has never seen her look vulnerable. Never. Not when other slags in the school had bitched about her to her face, not when she's over at Carly's again because her mother wasn't at home for the third time that week, and she didn't have the keys to let herself in._

_Spencer is the only one trying to comfort the weepy woman, his face contorted in a mixture of sympathy and pain – this was one of his kiddos that had a good throwing arm and an equally accurate aim to boot. This was the kiddo he relied on as a human garbage disposal when nobody wanted to eat his new eccentric dish, not even himself. This was the kiddo…_

_The doctor stays by the foot of his patient's bed, checking recent datas of his patient and making sure her heart beat is stable._ It will take a while_, he had told them minutes before, trained to hold eyecontact with the people in the room despite the sadness that pushed down on them all – it all came with the job. _While her body is stabilized, her mind has not. It may take weeks, months even; all I can suggest now is visitors often drop by to keep her updated on the current happenings, to see if we can bring her back._ And by the looks of those four people in the room, including the young, young teenagers that had been misfortuned to have their innocence taken away by such a cruel act of fate, the doctor knows this patient would have a line waiting to visit her._

_And he is pleased – or as pleased as one can get in such an unfortunate event. He would pray, with them and for this girl. A great pity; his children loved iCarly, and through them, he'd recognized the patient's name immediately_. Such a lively girl with great energy_, he mused to himself, letting out a long sigh before quietly leaving the room to give them all the privacy they needed. _I can only hope she gets out of this well.

_Nobody speaks for a moment after the doctor's exit; even Mrs. Puckett's sobs had quietened down. All eyes are trained onto Sam's body, each so desperately wishing, hoping, even _expecting_ the blonde girl to pounce up and announce it was all a joke while demanding for some food. _

_That didn't happen. _Out of all the times, Sam,_ Freddie thinks, burying his head into his hands like Carly has, _you have to be serious about this._ And he, along with everyone in the room, wishes that this was all a joke. But this was reality. This was real. They were slowly beginning to realize that, however reluctantly they may._

I can't remember what'd happened to me. Where am I? This place reminds me too much of where they'd locked my Uncle Joe in years ago. How did I get here? Why had I been so surprised that I'd been able to move before?

This place certainly wasn't Seattle.

After aimless wandering, I finally sat down again, one hand absently rummaging through the pocket of my hoodie to take out a packet of Fat Cake. Food. Mmm. Freddie and Carly could wait for me a little longer – even if they'd complain to me later, they would wait by the Groovie Smoothie until I'd arrive. It was just going to be a little brainstorming session of our next iCarly episode. Licking my lips, I tilted my head to the side, eyebrows knitted in concentration. I swear I could've heard a beeping noise.

No matter. Fat cakes are more important right now.

_Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. They were all so exhausted. The only thing that broke the silence was the monotonous beeping of the heart monitor._

_

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**Disclaimer: **I do not own iCarly. I only own this plot, and the random OOC characters and their characterizations.

**A/N:** Hey people! It's my first iCarly fiction, yayy! Anyway, this is the introduction of a plot that had been in my head for quite some time now – I hope you all liked it. The next chapter should be around… soon. Can't make any promises, but by the latest would be next month. The italicized words are the current happenings, while the normal, non-italicized words are in Sam's POV. It might be a little strange to you right now... It might become clearer in the next chapter, I hope - if it isn't, I'll explain it all in the next author's note.

I'd love to know your thoughts and feelings on this! Thanks!


	2. Chapter 1

Fredward Benson, Week One – Day Three

They've silently formulated a schedule amongst each other. Sam's mother, Mrs. Benson, or Spencer comes on Mondays. It's Carly's turn on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Freddie visits Sam on Wednesdays and Fridays. The whole group comes on Saturdays, and they leave Sam to rest on Sundays. It's an unspoken arrangement, yet one everyone agrees upon. Silence, which has once been a rare thing in all of their lives, is now suddenly thrust upon them ever since that horrible day of Sam's accident.

It's Freddie's turn today. He enters the room quietly after the doctor tells him her unchanging condition and leaves to the next room down the corridor. It's the second week, but the boy is still unnerved by Sam's fragile state. He will never get used to it.

Instead of sitting down on the chair by her bedside, he channels his mom's nursing habits just for this moment as he flits around the room, absently arranging the fresh batch of flowers he has brought for her in the glass vase, opening the blinds of the curtains, straightening the picture that hangs crookedly by the door. But like everything else, soon there is nothing to fix, except for the girl lying on that bed – and as desperately as he wishes he could, Sam is someone he can't fix. She is broken a hell lot more than what he, Carly, adults, and even doctors with their fancy technology can repair.

_She's always been difficult,_ he thinks bitterly, sitting down heavily onto his chair. _His_ chair – he hates how each person has their own personal chair that they've brought from home into this room. It makes things more _permanent_, sore bottoms be damned. And he doesn't want a breakable Sam to be a permanent thing. Never. The boy reaches out to hold her hand – the one free of needles – gently in his warm ones. "C'mon, Sam," he urges, his whisper finally breaking the silence other than the monitor that continues to faintly beep. "It's been five days. I know you like sleeping, but _this_ is a little ridiculous, don't you think?" Freddie hates his attempt at lighthearted humor, yet he is forced to try.

He waits for her familiar punch on the arm that she so readily gives whenever she thinks he's lame – or whenever she's bored, in general. He waits, but none comes. He knows that none will come for a long time, but a small part of his falters, breaks. Because he's still waiting for her to open her eyes and declare her boredom of _'playing brain-dead'_, like the blonde-haired demon she is. His eyes flutter shut warily for a long, long moment, feeling much older than his seventeen year old self, before he forces a smile on his face.

"Alright Sam," he begins, brown eyes watching Sam's face for a flicker of recognition of his presence. There is none. "It's Wednesday today, just in case you didn't know. School's going to start in a few weeks, and if you keep this up, you'll miss the beginning of our senior year. Senior year, Sam!" He pauses, a sudden thought making him shake his head wryly at the motionless blonde. "On the other hand, you'd like that, right?"

Freddie takes a moment to simply watch her. He wonders what she's thinking of, where she is – the doctors had said there was activity going on in her brain. Thumb brushing over her limp knuckles, he leans over to carefully brush a curl away from her forehead. "You're a mystery, Sam, you know that? Of course, I'd known it before, but you've managed to stump the doctors and their – what would you call it? – 'geeky technology'. Congratulations. I'd give you some ham, if you were awake and all." Again, the desperate bait that he can't help but dangle in her face.

No response.

"Fine, moving on then. Yesterday was our iCarly rehearsal, but, well, you can guess how _that_ went. We just drew a total blank. It's never the same whenever you're gone, Sam. Nobody was in the mood for anything, really, so I ended up going home, while Carly helped Spencer with his new sculpture. Everyone's pretty beat up about it. Can't you stop playing this game, Sam?" Pleading – he was doing it again despite himself. Hell, he'd go on his knees and _beg_, shower her with tonnes of Fat Cakes for a lifetime if she just woke up so he could see her piercing blue eyes again.

He drones on and on about trivial matters that Sam would usually have a snide remark ready, more than half his sentences containing her name in them. They were to remind her of her name so that she wouldn't forget, as if chanting it over and over would somehow miraculously bring their favourite blonde back from her trance. Freddie soon gets tired of the sound of his voice, so he lapses back into the silence that has forced them to become familiar with. All the physical and emotional pain she'd put him through is nothing compared to the pain he's feeling now.

Silence truly is a scary thing.

He doesn't realize his hour of visiting time is up until an amiable nurse comes in with various liquid packs she has to change. It's her food. He lingers long enough to see how the liquified food is pushed through the needles that poke through her skin, and he wants to yell, because this is all _wrong_. Sam shouldn't be fed in such a way. She should be sitting up, almost _inhaling_ everything she's offered despite her dislike for hospital food.

He watches for a minute before turning away from the scene in front of him. Freddie walks down the corridor, his old-fashioned beeper that his mother had somehow discovered in her trunk last month going off. Only his mother could ever think beepers, especially out-dated ones such as these, were more effective than cellphones. But even before he can check his pager, he almost collides with his mother herself.

"Fredward! What have I told you about looking ahead when you're walking?" He cringes at her loud voice which turns heads as people pass them, most of them looking with curiosity. _It'll be over soon,_ he thinks it over like a mantra, knowing that he'd only face public humiliation for a short moment before he'd be forced to hear her lecture on saftey and heigene in the car. At least nobody could jeer at him there. He gets himself ready for the next long minutes, but what his mother says next makes him tense. "We have to be especially careful now – I don't want you to end up like Samantha now."

He knows his mother is simply being concerned, yet this flares a spark of irritation in him. "Mom!" Face set into a deep scowl, his mother stops in mid-sentence in shock at her son's outburst. "It's not _Sam's_ fault that the car had hit her! We _saw_ her looking both ways, _and_ if it was safe for her to cross the _fucking_-,"

"Now, Freddie-,"

"- road. We all know that the _dumbass_ of a driver-,"

"Fredward!"

"- was the one that kept going even if the damned red light was still on!" By now, everyone has stopped their activities to watch them in interest, some being less tactless than others by full-out staring. But Freddie is beyond caring. He's so _sick_ of people assuming it was all Sam's fault – it wasn't, damn it. He can't fully blame the careless driver, as much as he wants to; his nature is to turn everything to his responsibility. If only they'd stuck with Carly's suggestion of discussing ideas for iCarly in her flat instead of listening to _his_ option of going to the Groovy Smoothie. And _of course_ Sam had opted for his choice – as long as she'd been getting a smoothie.

He senses his mother's disapproval for those small swear words and his rising voice, and stops himself in time before he ends up ranting. "Sorry – it's been an exhausting week," he says to his mother through gritted teeth, and glances over his shoulder unconsciously at the direction of Sam's room. Had she been lucid, she would have been proud of him for that. She had always been proud of him whenever he was in, as she said, 'Rebellious Freddie Mode'. Freddie sighs, uncurling the fist he hasn't known his hands had formed. He can feel his mother looking at him while he purposely looks at the ceiling.

When she begins walking out of the hospital, he follows.

* * *

Samantha Puckett – Week One, Day Three

It's strange how things work out. I swear I've eaten half my weight of Fat Cakes since I've been here – the empty packets scattered around me are proof. But every time I reach into my hoodie pocket, there's at least one packet emerging along with my hand. I'm not complaining about it, hell no. But I'm suspicious.

And these Fat Cakes are weird – one bite, and they're your average Fat Cakes, sweet and crumbly. But the next bite would have a taste that reminded me all too strongly of hospital food. Or the lunches that Mrs. B likes to make for poor Freddork. I'm not sure if I like these Fat Cakes all too much; at first, it was amusing. Exciting, even, to make me wonder if the next bite will taste like, rainbows or something just as ridiculous, or something shitty.

After eating more than a dozen though, has made me realize that the Fat Cakes are either Fat Cake-flavored or taste like food served at the hospital. So that got boring. Strangely enough, I'm not even hungry, even if I haven't drunk in _ages_. It's like my body is constantly hydrated without needing me to force water into my system. Odd.

I've been checking my wristwatch with the design of an eyeball for its face every so often, but the darn thing must've been broken somehow, since the needles aren't moving at all. So I've pretty much lost track of time; Carly and Freddork are going to be _so_ peeved off about that. Although I wonder why they even bother with me sometimes – they know I'm not the most punctual person around. I'm pretty sure I'm _really_ late though, much later than I usually am. I should probably try to get out of this place.

You know, if I haven't already fucking tried a hundred times already.

I've tried everything, really. Throwing packets of Fat Cakes around, both empty and full – they don't bounce off anything. It's like a barren of _white_, with no boundaries. Makes me feel small. And lost. And bored.

The most annoying thing is, though, that constant faint _beeping_ I hear everywhere I go. I'm stuck in, literally, the middle of nowhere, yet I can hear that annoying sound. And being in the middle of nowhere, you'd expect it to be _quiet_. But when I'm not hearing the beeping, there's all these mulled _voices_ that I can never figure out around me. It bugs me, and at the same time, comforts me – at least I'm not alone.

I get tired of walking, so I sit down. I'm not afraid of getting lost, because I know I'm already lost anyway. I still had food with me – so what did I care? Carly and Freddie would just have to _deal_, damn it. Maybe if they were worried, they'd try to find me – not that I think they can. We could always meet up later anyway, to discuss…

To discuss…

Why was I meeting them again? I scratch my head, feeling confused and disoriented again. Freddie. Carly. Wasn't I going to hang with them to _do_ something? A school project, maybe. Except school hasn't started yet, and we weren't given summer homework, as far as I remember – not that I care if we do or not. Then why was I so worked up to meet them at…

At…

Groovy Smoothie. That word suddenly popped out at me, and I frowned. It was probably a funky name for a type of smoothie. I plopped down onto my back, my eyes staring at the blank space of white nothingness. Words and images were all jumbled up in my head, and it didn't help that the unnecessary beeping didn't shut up already.

I _really_ needed to stop spacing out.

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**Disclaimer: **I do not own iCarly. I only own this plot, and the random OOC characters and their characterizations.

**A/N:** I'm back! Firstly, I'd like to thank every one of you for favoriting and/or reviewing my story, it meant a lot to me. 3. Secondly, how was this chapter? I'm pretty on the line about it – I don't particularly like or dislike it. What do you guys think of it? If there's any problems you have about it, please tell me so that I won't make the same mistake in the next chapter. And if you like it – well, I'd always like to hear that too. *laughs* Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

….*pssttt* And should I continue the story, or give up now? Thanks!


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